Rating: 
Summary: An important first novel
Review: This spare, important book, so elegant in its simplicity, should be read by everyone (at least) who grew up in the 60s and 70s without the knowledge that Japanese internment camps ever existed. The day- to-dayness of its details is stunning and Otsuka (or a brilliant editor) seemed to know just how many to include. Definitely on my list of best fiction of 2002.
Rating: 
Summary: A CLEAR GLIMPSE INTO HISTORY ON A VERY PERSONAL LEVEL.
Review: This was a marvelous book. Talk about the other side of the coin. Being partially from Hawaii, and a Caucasian adopted by a Japanese American, this subject has always been lurking in our family. Pearl Harbor is not something we discuss very much. This book was like a secret glimpse into the lives of innocent Japanese Americans who were interned after Pearl Harbor. Their story is by far not the most tragic, but much more common than many of us realize. Somehow this author managed to tell the story without it being too depressing and I'm not sure how she managed this. It is beautiful and impressive, without being too didactic. Hard to describe, but so worth reading. A rather short book too, but packs a wallop.
Rating:
Summary: Dry documentary account handles this difficult subject
Review: Throughout the reading I was very concerned with the names - or rather with the lack of names in the story. There is the Father, Mother, Boy and Girl. They have no names, as if no identity. I asked myself several times why the author has chosen to do so. Isn't it true we better understand a general story concerning a disaster that happened to many people when we hear the tale and hardships of one specific individual, one family? But maybe the author wanted to stress that this is not the story of one family but of many people the author knew, and the Father, Mother Boy and Girl are just four people amongst many whose fate was similar. The family members stand as symbols to many others. Or maybe she chose to do so in order to make the alienation and dehumanization experience more accentuated? The answer might be both. The alienation is a very central theme of this story and works also within the family as the members of the family seem to hold out a lot of feelings from each other (although they clearly love each other) as a self defense mechanism (or so I believe) and also as breaking down will not help the situation.
This is a story about the fate of the Japanese Americans during World War II, when each one of them was suspected as assisting the enemy. Although I am familiar with World War II stories this is an historical event I never heard about, which bears a bitter resemblance to the fate of Jewish people in Europe during same war. The Japanese were not sent to death camps but were closed in concentration camps from which they did not return the same people. There is clearly a large difference but the details of the earlier notices limiting the Japanese Americans actions, the long train rides where uncertainty prevails, the concentration camps - all sound like many Holocaust accounts, a fact that makes this story hard to bear.
It took me some time to understand the name "When the emperor was divine", which relates to the religious belief that the Emperor is a god; a belief the American Japanese had to hide during World War II.
The fact that neither the family (the children) nor the reader knows what the father underwent during his long confinement and seperation from the family (in spite of the last part "confession" that can give us a few hints) makes his missing for four years stay incomplete and unexplained. The children grew up in a very vague understanding of what happened, and probably had to fill up the rest of the information by their own. I can only imagine the conflict of loyalties created after the war when the country you live in is the one responsible to your family's suffering.
The power of the book is the fact that there is a shortage in overflow of emotions, which could have been a very easy way to deal with the very difficult subject. The author chose to tell her story in a dry, somewhat documentary language. The horrors are told very subtly and in a somewhat "side look" fashion - "she read the sign from top to bottom... she wrote down a few words on the back of a bank receipt." as if what the sign says concerns someone else and not the end of your life as you knew them. I believe that holding back your emotions is also a very Japanese way to which the author remained loyal. The language is a combination of a dry account with dreams and thoughts that sometimes turn the prose into lyrical poetry.
Not an easy read but a very good historical, important account.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning In Its Simplicity
Review: When people--any people--cease to be seen as individuals, they become "them"--the faceless, nameless "enemy." In this exquisite short novel, a shameful episode of American history is re-examined--the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. It was a time when everyone of Japanese descent was somehow "them"--the enemy. And in becoming "the enemy" they lose much of what it means to be human.
The tiny family--mother, son, daughter--is devastated when their father is suddenly taken away in his robe and slippers, suspected of who knows what. A few months later they are forced to give up everything and move to a dusty prison camp somewhere in Utah.
After more than three years they return home, changed and traumatized. Eventually they are reunited with the father, but he too is changed, a broken shadow of himself.
The story is told in eloquent, simple, spare prose, in small but telling details, in the fragmented but powerful insights of the two children and their mother. It is never over-stated, never sentimental, yet it will bring you to tears.
The book concludes with a short but powerful epilogue, a fierce and powerful essay on what it means for anyone to be "them," to be "the enemy."
This is a painful book, but it is important for you to read it. I cannot recommend it too strongly. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning In Its Simplicity
Review: When people--any people--cease to be seen as individuals, they become "them"--the faceless, nameless "enemy." In this exquisite short novel, a shameful episode of American history is re-examined--the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. It was a time when everyone of Japanese descent was somehow "them"--the enemy. And in becoming "the enemy" they lose much of what it means to be human.
The tiny family--mother, son, daughter--is devastated when their father is suddenly taken away in his robe and slippers, suspected of who knows what. A few months later they are forced to give up everything and move to a dusty prison camp somewhere in Utah.
After more than three years they return home, changed and traumatized. Eventually they are reunited with the father, but he too is changed, a broken shadow of himself.
The story is told in eloquent, simple, spare prose, in small but telling details, in the fragmented but powerful insights of the two children and their mother. It is never over-stated, never sentimental, yet it will bring you to tears.
The book concludes with a short but powerful epilogue, a fierce and powerful essay on what it means for anyone to be "them," to be "the enemy."
This is a painful book, but it is important for you to read it. I cannot recommend it too strongly. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.
Rating:
Summary: GOOD THINGS COME IN SMALL PACKAGES
Review: WHEN THE EMPEROR WAS DIVINE tells the gripping tale of a Japanese-American family sent away to an internment camp in 1942. Their devastation begins when the father was arrested while still in his slippers and bathrobe on the night of Pearl Harbor. Months later flyers are posted throughout Berkeley announcing the mandatory deportation of all individuals of Japanese hertitage. The mother and her two small children are sent on a long train ride and eventually settle in a camp in Utah for three years and five months.Julie Otsuka's prose is excellent and convincing. She writes in a style that kept me fully engaged and I was anxious to find out what happened to this anonymous family. Will they ever see the father again? How will they be able to rebuild their lives when they are eventually released after the end of the war? I most enjoyed the insights of the little boy as he endured the time spent in the detention camp. His imagination and seriousness are beyond his years. Their return home was most sad. WHEN THE EMPEROR WAS DIVINE tells the story of one of the darker chapters in American history. The horrors that they have endured must have been awful. Their only crime was of being of Japanese hetitage. This book is small but don't let that fact put you off since Julie Otsuka packs a bunch in her debut novel. Simply put, this book is well worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: A short but revealing novel
Review: When the Emperor Was Divine was one of the required readings in a college English Lit. class I took last semester. It's well-written, touching, and revealing: each chapter gives us a view of the repercussions the internment had on the members of the Japanese-American family we follow throughout the short novel. I would like to point out to "a reader" from Appleton, Wisconsin (2/22/04) that the author, Julie Otsuka, is narrating what happened to her own mother, who was the inspiration for the girl's character, and her family in the years between Pearl Harbor and the end of WWII. In that sense Otsuka becomes the voice of a first-person witness of the events. This book sparked very lively discussions and a lot of research on the subject among the students; most of us, while understanding the war-time heightened need for security, agreed on the injustice of depriving thousands of people of their liberty without just cause: most internees had no contacts with the enemy, had never set foot in Japan, and were loyal Americans. For many of us this book represented a different view on a seldom talked-about period of our history.
Rating:
Summary: A short but revealing novel
Review: When the Emperor Was Divine was one of the required readings in a college English Lit. class I took last semester. It's well-written, touching, and revealing: each chapter gives us a view of the repercussions the internment had on the members of the Japanese-American family we follow throughout the short novel. I would like to point out to "a reader" from Appleton, Wisconsin (2/22/04) that the author, Julie Otsuka, is narrating what happened to her own mother, who was the inspiration for the girl's character, and her family in the years between Pearl Harbor and the end of WWII. In that sense Otsuka becomes the voice of a first-person witness of the events. This book sparked very lively discussions and a lot of research on the subject among the students; most of us, while understanding the war-time heightened need for security, agreed on the injustice of depriving thousands of people of their liberty without just cause: most internees had no contacts with the enemy, had never set foot in Japan, and were loyal Americans. For many of us this book represented a different view on a seldom talked-about period of our history.
Rating:
Summary: A Divine First Novel
Review: When the Emperor Was Divine will definitely be one of my top ten reads for the year 2002. The book written by Julie Otsuka engaged me from the first page and left me wishing for more when the book ended. The book is divided into five chapters, each one told by a different Japanese - American family member at the beginning of America's entry into WWII. Each of these voices, from the youngest family member to the oldest, resonates with the sounds of isolation and despair. From the earliest days of the posters summoning Japanese - Americans to the return of this family to their homes, readers are held captive by this book. All too soon we learn how dramatically life changed for these United States citizens who in most cases were interned for no other reason than they were Japanese and therefore thought to be the enemy. While the woman's husband and her children's father is detained under suspicion in a prison, she relates the first story of coming upon the notice of the camps and then packing up her house for departure. The daughter relates the train trip to an unknown destination while the son tells us what their lives were like when they lived among others in the camp. Then the mother's voice is heard once again as the war ends and they are allowed to return home. But they return home to find that life as they once knew it may never be the same. Their house has been looted and when the husband and father returns home he is a changed man. It is this last chapter, the voice of the father, which is so haunting and remains with me still. As I read the words more than once, I couldn't help but see Edward Munch's painting, Scream, before my eyes or think about the emotional intensity in Alan Ginsberg's poem, Howl. In this rather short title, Ms. Otsuka presents us with a magnificent debut novel. We come to feel for her characters fate as the book begins rather quietly and then reaches a resounding crescendo by the end. This is a wonderful reading experience by an author who I will surely read in the future.
Rating: 
Summary: boring, disjointed read
Review: While it's nice to be able to sit down and read a book in one sitting, I suggest you NOT pick this one. It was boring, disjointed and read more like a fine essay than a novella/novel. I truly don't understand what all the hype is about this little book. The writing, while eloquent, is lacking and I just don't have much to say about it other than it is boring. Sorry but had to put in my two cents. There is a disturbing part in the beginning about a dog which I think ruined it for me.
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